We spoke to Elia this morning, and he told us that after a bit of sleuthing he was actually able to uncover the source of the image: a royalty free photograph on Unsplash that was allegedly taken in October of 2017 with a Canon 1D Mark IV. Elia has asked that we not “out” the photographer, but you can see the EXIF data in this screenshot:

Screenshot by DPReview

From there, it doesn’t take an advanced degree to figure out what happened. A social media team at Canon Europe took to Unsplash to find a royalty free picture to share. They probably searched for “Canon 1D Mark IV” and “Italy,” and when they stumbled across this shot they had no idea that it was, in fact, not a single image but a composite of (at least) two photos… one of which was taken with a Fujifilm camera. Read the full story at DPReview

It’s strange to me that Canon would be this lazy in posting images. I find it hard to believe they don’t have a library of countless great images they could use for social media.

Well this is an odd one. According to FStoppers Canon Italy has posted an image to social media without credit, consisting of stolen elements and not even taken on a Canon camera.

It looks like someone at Canon took the work of landscape photographer Elia Locardi and used some elements from the image in a composite on an image Canon Italy posted to Instagram and Facebook.

So, the social media team for Canon Italy (and Spain) have posted a composite landscape, half of which was stolen, not taken with a Canon, and not credited anyone involved in the creation of this image. Rough day at the office.

Social media is full of brands stealing photos, not crediting authors, not expecting to pay for using someone elses photos. However, to see someone at a company like Canon do it, that seems even worse.